Under 16 and Pregnant

On the way to rowing club last night, I called in to visit a neighbour. As I entered the house, she was whispering with her teenage son in the kitchen.

"Don't tell her," he said.

They hung around the kitchen looking guilty. I wondered if it was because she was serving him a dinner of spare ribs without a side salad. A few weeks ago when I visited, he'd been eating spare ribs then too -- and I insisted that he eat salad or I would drag him to my house for lettuce soup.

BBQ spare ribs is his favourite meal: he's fourteen and he now has 5000 spare ribs inside him; enough to build a clone army from left over bones.

Her other boy, aged six, wandered to the freezer and began to rummage through the icepops.

"I know what it is," he laughed.

I looked at the older boy's dinner and thought, gosh I'm not that much of a food fascist -- eat the hot BBQ spare ribs before they go cold! Stop hiding your dinner!

The neighbour leaned over to the little one's ears, "Go on then," she said.

I saw her stifle a laugh; she mouthed to me, "He just said, 'the things that girls and boys do when they get close to one another.'"

Of course I was baffled. What's that? Fight?

"I'm going to tell her,' said my neighbour, 'She's the only one standing in the kitchen who doesn't know."

Then she mouthed in an exaggerated Les Dawson fashion that a girl at her son's school is pregnant. Seven months pregnant. It's thought she's been hiding it all this time.

"Ah," I said.

"You don't seem surprised," she said.

Maybe it's because I'm researching and writing on teenagers and sex, but, well, it's not that unusual is it?

Unfortunately, some young girls get caught out and they need help; hiding it under a jumper is no help at all.

This is why for Jack's sex education, we read the book 'Let's Talk About Sex" (AGH I screamed inside. LET'S NOT) and then some months after that we watched the film Juno and discussed personal responsibility At Great Length.

"These things happen," I said. Then I turned to her son. "Right," I continued. "Don't go making your mum a granny." I gave him the raised eyebrows. "And you do know, don't you, that you should be able to get free condoms from the school nurse! And, if a girl needs emergency contraception the school nurse should give it to her..."

"What's that? Medication?"

"Yes, a pill...the morning after pill," I called loudly across the kitchen. "If needs be, the nurse can even take the child off the school premises so that she can collect a prescription. And you needn't worry about school telling the parents because it's confidential."

"I've seen a door with school nurse on it," he said. "But I don't know if she is in there..."


I tell Jack not to have sex until he's over sixteen, as well as telling him the health stuff. Jack goes to an all boys school. And it's well known by all the boys that the school nurse hands out free condoms, because apparently some of the older boys have a stash that they've (optimistically) been collecting for years.

"Do you have lessons on contraception at school?" I shouted across the kitchen to her son. "Hm, it's a Catholic school isn't it...?"

Her Teenboy groaned, "See Mum, this is why I said don't tell HER...."